Letter: Recycling must be way forward

It will need to take waste from far and wide to repay the financiers behind the plant to repay their £150m outlay as well as ongoing profits. It will also not provide us with cheap electricity, as there are no plans to link it to the grid.

If the pollution from the chimney does not affect your breathing then the nearly 300 HGV movements a day to the site might.

I refer to the article by James Oxenham (3rd May) entitled ‘We need to learn from China say incinerator developers’ based on Britaniacrest’s opinion over their plans to put 180,000 tonnes burning incinerator in Horsham.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the average concentration of the harmful PM 2.5 particles in China is 41.4 and ranks China as 13th in the world of the most pollutants. China is also the source of nearly a third of the world’s total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions according to the Paris climate change agreement, which China has still yet to sign.

Lack of democracy in China dates back from present day to 1895, so is the director of Britaniacrest, the family owned company that seeks to blight rural areas with an industrial incinerator the size of Big Ben, suggesting from his quotes that voters of Sussex should be ignored and that we should turn the clock back to the pollution of China where everyone wears face masks to avoid health risks?

Haulage firm, Britaniacrest, details ‘scaremongering’ by opposing campaign groups.

What Britaniacrest seems to be referring to is a statement by a national charitable organisation that has the Queen as patron. CPRE Sussex (Campaign to Protect Rural England), which is respected for providing challenging factual evidence over planning issues, questioned the details provided by Britaniacrest as part of its planning application.

Britaniacrest’s own project manager said in a TV interview that the chimney has to be 95m tall to take the pollution away. CPRE has simply highlighted that the data provided by Britaniacrest is based on Charlwood, Surrey, which is north of the site and so seemingly irrelevant to the application as the plume from the chimney would fall over highly populated areas and on the edge of Sussex High Weald AONB which includes important drinking water reservoirs.

It would seem critical that this organisiation raises such concerns and that factual details relating to the current site be put in the public domain to what happens long term when the pollutants from the chimney comes down?

I quote from their statement: ‘CPRE Sussex is now demanding a full investigation into how and where the pollutants emitted by the facility, individually, collectively, and cumulatively over time, could or would impact on farmland and livestock and the natural environment, including habitats, biodiversity and ecology.’

I have forwarded the article of last week to Sir David Attenborough and other NGOs that are concerned with the planet to see if they agree with Britaniacrest’s opinion about incineration and our planet’s welfare.

I personally do not believe they will as to burn is not a sustainable way forward for our planet as it endeavours to keep pace with the demands consumerism.

Recycling must be the way forward and we can only hope that we still have democracy in this part of the UK and that WSCC and HDC votes to oppose this planning application as once it is there it will be burning for evermore.

Sally Pavey

Mayes Lane, Warnham